Once upon a time, a princess was born with hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow. After the huntsman and before the dwarfs—while she was all alone in that great forest—the princess met a demon.
He was hunting unicorns.
And what bait could better snare his prey than the fairest of them all?
This is the secret tale that the princess never shared with the world.
This is the true story.

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Don’t forget — the Swag Shop still has a few copies of THE GLASS MOUNTAIN left, signed by Alethea Kontis AND cover artist Bianca Roman-Stumpff!

On the way to her wedding, brave and clever Princess Sabine falls into a Glass Mountain, where she is trapped with a crotchety, smelly man she calls “Old Rinkrank.” The two form a unique, unlikely friendship while working to escape.

So I tied Bianca to a chair and forced her to listen to “The Unicorn Hunter” on audio…okay so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but not much. It *is* still one of my favorite stories. That night, Bianca went to work her shift at Cafe Tu Tu Tango and she started the painting that would become the cover for the second chapbook in the Fairy Tales of Arilland series!

Release Date: April 24, 2018

Once upon a time, a princess was born with hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow.

After the huntsman and before the dwarfs—while she was all alone in that great forest—the princess met a demon. He was hunting unicorns. And what bait could better snare his prey than the fairest of them all?

This is the secret tale that the princess never shared with the world. This is the true story.

If you haven’t snapped up this fairy tale classic for your Kindle yet, do it now while it’s only 99 cents! Share with your friends!

2015 Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award Winner

In the fairy tale realm of Arilland, stories are told at children’s bedsides–and not the stories you think you know. Tales of Arilland is a collection of fairy tales, presented in the magical topsy-turvy way that only Alethea Kontis can do. Discover the story of Bluebeard’s first wife (“Blood From Stone”), what really happened to Snow White in those dark woods (“The Unicorn Hunter”), how dangerous the Little Mermaid might have been (“Blood and Water”), and just how far Little Red Riding Hood was willing to go (“Hero Worship”). Included in this collection is “Sunday,” the original novelette that inspired the award-winning novel Enchanted, as well as “The Cursed Prince,” the previously untold history of Prince Rumbold of Arilland…and more.

Woodcutter enthusiasts will rejoice at this opportunity to delve into the secret worlds beyond Kontis’s intricately woven fantasy novels. And if you are not a fan yet, you will be!

Blackbird Publishing interviewed me about my story “The Goblin and the Treasure,” my contribution to the new anthology Once Upon a Quest.

The story is based on a fairy tale most people have forgotten (or never knew in the first place): “The Goblin and the Grocer” from Andrew Lang’s Pink Fairy Book. I have always loved the message of this tale, which is essentially about how books can magically change one’s life for the better.

My heroine, however, is based on this AWESOME cover. Kira Kobold is one of the youngest soldiers who fought (unwillingly) in the Evil Queen’s army. Now that the war is at an end, the only work for someone like her is if she’s lucky enough to be chosen for a quest by the High Wizard Zelwynn.

Which she is, of course, along with a growly ogress, a surly dwarf, a dimwitted troll, and an overly optimistic goblin. This wasn’t exactly the quest she was looking for…but often the treasures we seek are not the ones we find in the end.

Happy book birthday to The Glass Mountain! The first in a long line of books for both me and Bianca to sign at conventions…

On the way to her wedding, brave and clever Princess Sabine falls into a Glass Mountain, where she is trapped with a crotchety, smelly man she calls “Old Rinkrank.” The two form a unique, unlikely friendship while working to escape.

Alethea Kontis’s take on this classic Grimms’ fairy tale is a dark, yet optimistic novelette of magic, mystery, and love.

It’s been too long since I joined forces with my dear friend Joyce Lamb at USA Today’s Happy Ever After. So when she asked a bunch of us to contribute to the HEA Valentine’s Day Feature Post, our subsequent emails led to Joyce saying, “You’ve got a new book coming out? Well, let’s get Down & Dirty!”

This was one of those really fun interviews to do. Not because the answers lent themselves to being so short, but because thinking about them at all made for a really fun time. And as someone who has been on the asking end of as least as many interview questions I’ve answered, I can tell you that an interview where the subject has FUN is one that is definitely worth reading.

Here’s hoping that my Down & Dirty answers are a bright spot to your day today!

Heather Hayden has everything a young witch could desire: beauty, money, popularity, and exceptionally strong magical powers. Too bad she’s also got a dysfunctional family that couldn’t care less about her and a Head Witch who’s watching her every move. Heather has no idea what she wants. But she’s pretty sure it’s not some low-rent cat shifter boy from goddess-knows-where, despite the fact that their paths keep crossing again and again…and again.

Owen Liddell is in big trouble. A hundred years ago, a descendant of Arachne tricked him into staring into the eyes of the Great Sphinx, leaving him bespelled into the form a cat. Now Arachne’s sisters have found him again and placed one of their own as a substitute teacher at Harmswood. And if that weren’t bad enough, destiny got involved, tangling his heart up with the most popular witch in school: his best friend Kai’s sworn enemy.

Can Owen escape the evil spider sisters, thwart the spell, rescue the girl, save his friendship and pass his finals all before Zombie Prom? It seems unlikely. But unlikely things are known to happen in Nocturne Falls…

While sorting out my library this year, I found multiple boxes of Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology. It was the first book I ever got published, a collection of SF All-Stars edited by me, with an intro by Arthur C. Clarke and a cover by Michael Whelan. I’ve got hardcovers, paperbacks, and ARCs…so if you’d like a particular version, please specify in the notes of your order!

Lily asked a very good question on another post: “What’s the birth order of the Woodcutter siblings?”

Obviously, Monday-Sunday are easy to figure out. It’s one of the reasons I liked using those names–with so many daughters in a family, I could have easily confused my readers. But what about the boys?

At one point during a copyedit of Enchanted, I was forced to change the age of Prince Rumbold, which then changed a lot of the timing references throughout the story. I was forced to make an Excel spreadsheet of the Woodcutter children, with birth dates and ages that each of them where when certain events happened in their lives (Tuesday’s death, Monday’s marriage, Jack Junior’s disappearance, etc).

My good friend Eric James Stone helped me put something together, and I’ve used that grid ever since. I wont’ share the full grid with you (because I still want plausible deniability if I screw something up in the future), but here are the Woodcutter Siblings–brothers and sisters–listed in birth order (including Trix).